This interview originally appeared in the Closer to Ideal pamphlet sold at the 10th anniversary live of the same name in 2009.
Read other portions of this interview:
1999 - 2000
1999
ーFirst of all, you formed as a band on September 9, 1999. How long did you spend preparing?
Zero: 3 months
Hizumi: Yeah, we came out here around the middle of June, didn't we?
Tsukasa: It was June 16th.
Hizumi: On September 9th, we chose the band name.
ーWhat led up to the formation of the band?
Karyu: My band broke up, so I knew I had to look for new bandmates, and at the time I knew Zero as a drummer. We'd never spoken at all, but he used to tease me a lot when we were drinking.
Zero: (laugh)
Karyu: Then suddenly we were getting on well, and he'd come to hang out at my place. I asked him if he'd like to start a band together, and so then it started with us. We hadn't picked the band name D'espairsRay yet, though. Then, from there we started looking for other members but no one came to mind... Then, suddenly I remembered Hizumi and Tsukasa. I'd done a live in Akita or somewhere with my last band, and they'd come to see the show or were acquaintances of one of the other bands there. Then, we'd exchanged contact information so when I remembered them I gave [Hizumi] a call, and it was like his band was about to break up or it seemed like it was going to?
Hizumi: We were still in the band when I got that call, but since getting that call, things were starting to look ominous (laugh),
ーWere Hizumi and Tsukasa in the same band?
Hizumi: Yes.
ーIn short, things weren't working out with your guitarist and bassist, so you were thinking about doing something else?
Hizumi: No, there wasn't anything like that, but... Well.
Tsukasa: Yeah.
Hizumi: Tsukasa had been asked to join another band, but... I got the call from Karyu, decided to break up, and then made the decision to go to Tokyo.
Karyu: Before that, I told him to send me a demo tape because I hadn't heard his sound before. I figured I should at least hear his first... Then, the tape arrived, I listened, and I was shocked.
ーShocked, how?
Karyu: By the technical composition, maybe? I wasn't too concerned about the actual performance, but I remember thinking that he was doing something more amazing than I'd been doing, and that he had something special. So I knew I had to bring him in. After that I called him one more time, and he said, "Should I come to Tokyo?" I said, "Let's try meeting up," and so he came to Tokyo. Then Tsukasa followed...
ーFollowed?
Hizumi: Since he'd said they didn't have a drummer.
Karyu: That I wanted a drummer.
Hizumi: I asked if he'd come with me to Tokyo.
Karyu: So he reulctantly followed.
Everyone: (laugh)
Tsukasa: I wasn't reluctant. Well, since we had the disbandment, and it seemed like a chance for our next band.
Hizumi: You were looking?
Tsukasa: Yes.
Karyu: Then, we met up and I liked them. I thought we could make for a popular band, but Tsukasa didn't get as good of an impression as he'd expected so the whining started (laugh)
Everyone: (laugh)
Tsukasa: There were issues at home, and at the time I was working at an office, so it was difficult to make a decision.
ーSo, Tsukasa, were you leaning more towards staying and working in your hometown?
Tsukasa: That's how I felt then, when I'd only just become a working adult.
ーSo, the two of you came to Tokyo, met up at a studio for the first time, and ended up with a good impression?
Karyu: That's right. Everyone was more talented than I'd thought then. And so I knew I could rely on them, and didn't see any downsides.
ーSo it was July, or August, when you decided to move forward and start preparing?
Karyu: I don't remember.
Zero: Didn't we screw around for a while?
Everyone: (laugh)
Karyu: Yeah.
Zero: We'd go drinking and to karaoke.
Tsukasa: For about a month.
Zero: I remember thinking, "What should we do?" (laugh). It was good that we'd formed the band, but what then?
Hizumi: Like, when do we start?
Karyu: Screwing around... I wonder if we were actually screwing around?
Zero: Well, we were sure taking our time.
Hizumi: While working on songs...
Zero: We had no foundation.
Hizumi: Right.
Zero: Karyu and Tsukasa wrote music... while screwing around (laugh). And we'd go drinking at night.
Karyu: Right, we'd we communicated regularly and spent about a month that way.
ーYou took it slow for about a month?
Zero: Composing and drinking.
ーSo you started composing right after meeting.
Hizumi: It didn't feel like we were rushing.
ーWho chose the band name?
Karyu: Everyone did...
Hizumi: Everyone brought their ideas...
Karyu: First of all, I wanted the name to start with "D". My previous band was the same, now that I say it... Maybe it was because of that?
Zero: Yeah. There was something about starting with "D".
ーI imagine you must have talked about what kind of band you wanted to be, back then.
Karyu: The two of us talked a ton about it, but well, we were only thinking about things that would cost a lot of money. Things that would have been extremely difficult to actually do in such a short time.
Zero: We were considering things that you could only do at a one man? Always.
Karyu: Yeah.
Hizumi: We talked about putting wire meshing up in front of the stage. Like how would we even get something that big inside? (laugh) Where would we store it? How would we pay for it? And so on.
Karyu: Like if we tried hard enough we could do it (laugh).
Everyone: (laugh)
Hizumi: Like don't be ridiculous.
Karyu: If it was something that could be made, we'd make it.
Zero: I did welding at my job, so it was like, well if't it's iron I can do it.
Everyone: (laugh)
Hizumi: If it's iron (laugh). That was amazing.
ーIron, or rather, it must have been a period of your lives filled with hope for the future, wasn't it?
Zero: .....Yes.
Everyone: (laugh)
Hizumi: That feels off (laugh).
Karyu: But, I feel like during that first year a lot of things were all disjointed.
ーWell, in terms of getting to know each other, too, it's necessary time to spend. Do you remember your first live?
Hizumi: I don't remember much about it. I just have the impression still that it was over so fast.
Karyu: I clearly remember (Maebashi) RATTAN.
Hizumi: I also remember without a doubt that it was RATTAN. It was the day Zero shaved his eyebrows, wasn't it?
Zero: (laugh)
Hizumi: The day he shaved his eyebrows. I remember it clearly.
ーWhy the eyebrows?
Zero: I didn't have a(n eyebrow) razor, so I used a regular razo (with a handle). And I accidentally shaved one eyebrow off entirely (laugh).
Hizumi: "Shave it, shave it!"
Karyu: Like, "Shave it all off!"
ーThat's why you remember it.
Hizumi: Yes.
Zero: But, I remember AREA.
ーYour first time there?
Zero: Yes. We got on stage and it was over before you could blink. But despite that I was so worn out. I'd never gone as hard as I did then, but I'd said I wanted to be in an aggressive band, and that was the first time we were really on stage. But it felt like it lasted an instant, and I was so exhausted. More than a sense of accomplishment was a sense of exhaustion.
Karyu: It didn't feel like an accomplishment.
ーIt didn't? (laugh)
Karyu: I didn't know who I was. Each member of a band is supposed to have their own personality and positions, right? I didn't understand that at all, and I went on stage like that.
ーLike how each band that plays together has its own style? That the lineups are sort of similar?
Zero: I don't think it's that the lineup was different. Karyu's previous bassist was there, too.
ーHow were you feeling about it, Tsukasa? When you played the first live.
Tsukasa: I only remember a little bit, but it was like I was sprinting with all my strength without knowing my physical limits. And it was over in an instant.
ーSaying that you didn't know your physical limits, had you not played so aggressively before?
Tsukasa: I hadn't, in my previous band. From the start the three in the front moved very dynamically. That's the kind of music it is... I don't know if I was having fun or not. It was over in a split second.
ーAfter the first live you line up shows rapidly in October, November, and December. At the time, how many songs did you have?
Tsukasa: My impression is that it wasn't many.
Everyone: (laugh)
Karyu: That's right.
Hizumi: At the time we had enough songs to fill a 30 minute set. At the first live we had 5 songs? Or was it 6? I feel like it was somewhere around there.
ーDid you record your songs back then?
Zero: We did.
Hizumi: We had the free demo tape "Ao".
ーWhat was "Ao" like to the D'espairsRay of that time?
Zero: Was it the first song? It was the very first we made. I say made, but Karyu originally brought it to us.
Karyu: I wrote it when I was in my last band, but I think it was something like it hadn't fit the previous band.
Zero: More than the band's direction, I think it more strongly represented what everyone in the band was exploring at the time.
ーThe demo tape method takes me back.
Karyu: Yeah.
ーDo you still have the tape?
Karyu: I don't.
Zero: I have it on mini disc.
ーDo any of you still have the original tape?
Zero: I don't think any of us do.
ーHow many did you make? Of the demo tape.
Hizumi: Around 100? We made them manually, so that's an estimate (laugh).
Tsukasa: We copied them, right? The casettes.
Zero: And, we we copied the inserts, cut them with scissors, and put them into the casettes.
Hizumi: Printing them out (laugh).
Tsukasa: I have the feeling I was the one in charge of the tape copying.
ーThat's an important job.
Hizumi: They felt completely handmade (laugh)
Karyu: At the time, every live we played cost money. We were paying for lives out of pocket, so we didn't even make money. Ugh, it was tough.
Everyone: (laugh)
ーYou didn't have regular fans yet.
Hizumi: That's right.
Karyu: Rehearsal also cost money, and you have to buy things like guitar strings and other consumables, so it's a vicious cycle, isn't it? A negative spiral.
Everyone: (laugh)
Karyu: We did our best to break out of that.
ーThe band has to overcome that.
Karyu: That's right.
Hizumi: The quota* for AREA was extremely hard.
Everyone: (laugh)
Hizumi: We just couldn't hit it.
* Refers to the minimum number of tickets a band is expected to sell in order to perform, often a rule for small bands that are starting out. If they fall short of the ticket quota, they often have to pay the difference out of pocket,
ーWhen did you manage to hit it? Was it the following year?
Karyu: I think the first half (of the year) was pretty good.
Zero: A year later when we distributed the demo tape "RAZOR" we were exceeding the quota, weren't we... Maybe. I also think there must've been events you couldn't be in if you couldn't exceed it.
Karyu: Weren't we included quite a bit in the Yamagata Music Showa Sessions?
Zero: But that had nothing to do with D'espairsRay fans (laugh).
Hizumi: It was fans from our last band (laugh). Nowadays, you'll see listings like "ex-so-and-so," right? But originally there were individuals with a loyal fan base. Because it wasn't starting with the new band.
ーThat's right.
Hizumi: So I think the quota hurdle was extremely high.
ーEven so, doesn't this conversation remind you of have positive you must have been back then?
Karyu: We weren't positive back then (laugh(. Not at all...
Hizumi: It was our despair era.
Everyone: (laugh)
Karyu: In the beginning. Since I started from a pretty low place to begin with.
Hizumi: Everyone was pretty gloomy.
Karyu: It was negative. And we weren't going to get popular like that. No one would come see that (laugh)
ーFacing the following year after your free 1999 demo tape, did you think this band would make it? Or did you think it wouldn't work out?
Karyu: I thought that. That, it wouldn't work out.
ーThat it wouldn't?
Karyu: More than that, it's that the lineup was good, but there were times I was really feeling like we had different musical directions. That's just me.
ーAs the main composer, Karyu, what kind of sound were you considering for the band?
Karyu: I wasn't the main composer at that time yet. Because Tsukasa was also composing. And, everyone else tended to like Tsukasa's songs better most of the time.
ーThat must have been disheartening.
Karyu: So I was feeling like, "Huh? Is it me, am I the problem?"
ーWhat kind of songs was Tsukasa making?
Tsukasa: Originally I wrote exclusively melodious songs, so Karyu's songs were significantly darker and had more rhythmic parts. I think that's where the gap was, thinking about it now.
Hizumi: But all the songs we recorded were Karyu's.
Everyone: (laugh)
Karyu: There's where things started to change. Like the confidence that maybe we could do this.
Zero: Karyu's songs were, at the time, made by just playing guitar without using anything like multitrack recording; just playing the melody on guitar. So when you listened to the songs, the final vision wasn't clear.
ーDid Tsukasa use something like that?
Zero: He did. He used multitrack recording from the start.
ーThat makes it easier to understand.
Karyu: If you compare hitech and analog, I lost to hitech.
Everyone: (laugh)
Zero: It was on paper.
Tsukasa: Since Karyu brought songs that would be easy to get into at lives, the number of melodious songs we have now has grown, but in the past we put an emphasis on songs that we could rock out to with fans at lives.
ーI kind of want to hear it - the "Ao" demo tape.
Karyu: I wonder how it sounds (laugh)
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